The Killing Game

by Nancy Bush

  STALKING ANDI

  A jacket tossed over his shoulder, Luke followed Andi onto the porch and yanked the door shut. “What’s that?” he asked in a tight voice.

  “What?”

  He was staring at the willow wreath she’d hung on the door, his willow wreath. Her heart clutched as she saw him gingerly pluck a white card from the ring of sticks.

  “Another note?” he asked and her heart went cold. All the happiness she’d felt seconds earlier, the fantasies had shriveled.

  Carefully, just touching the edges, he turned the card over.

  Little birds should be careful whom they choose as a mate. Tsk, tsk. There is no such thing as faithfulness. Be careful. Seabirds can die, too.

  Andi started quaking, deep inside. “What is this? Why are they doing this?”

  “To scare you,” he said grimly.

  She shook her head.

  “Our note writer is threatened by me,” he observed. “Not sure what he means about being faithless. Maybe he thinks our relationship has gone on longer than it has.”

  “All this about birds. Trini and me ... and now seabirds?”

  “Some kind of clue,” Luke said.

  “It’s getting personal and he’s pissing me off.” That was true. The shivering inside her body, the fear, was morphing into anger. She was furious about what had happened to Trini, about her brother’s involvement, about creeping around and trying to terrorize her and now ... now bringing Luke into his sick, twisted game . . .

  Books by Nancy Bush

  CANDY APPLE RED

  ELECTRIC BLUE

  ULTRAVIOLET

  WICKED GAME

  WICKED LIES

  SOMETHING WICKED

  WICKED WAYS

  UNSEEN

  BLIND SPOT

  HUSH

  NOWHERE TO RUN

  NOWHERE TO HIDE

  NOWHERE SAFE

  SINISTER

  I’LL FIND YOU

  YOU CAN’T ESCAPE

  YOU DON’T KNOW ME

  THE KILLING GAME

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  The Killing Game

  NANCY BUSH

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  STALKING ANDI

  Books by Nancy Bush

  Title Page

  PART I - OPENING

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  PART II - MIDDLEGAME

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  PART III - ENDGAME

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  PART IV - CHECKMATE

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Copyright Page

  PART I

  OPENING

  Prologue

  I like games. All kinds. Crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, chess, Sudoku, Jumble, cryptograms, board games, video games, card games . . . I’m good at them. I’m also good at mind games. Deception, trickery, and lying come as naturally to me as breathing. There have been times when my emotions have taken over and nearly tripped me up, but now I have my rage and hate under control, for the most part. Still, emotions are part of the fuel that drives my favorite game: murder. Killing is the best game, by far. There is no comparison. The high that comes afterward is better than sex.

  The first time I killed it was because someone had become dangerous to me. The second time was just to see if I could get away with it, and I did, and it left me miles above the earth, so far out of reach it was like I lived on a distant planet. Untouchable. King of the universe. I had to return to earth eventually with its banality, a hard landing. But then I began plotting and planning again, constructing more games in order to buoy myself into the stratosphere once again. The world is so gray and mundane without puzzles, twists, turns, and mysteries, without someone’s life balanced on a razor’s edge.

  My latest game has begun. It’s about retribution and acquisition, but no one is to know. There’s some misdirection mixed in to the plot, to keep the cops at bay, and it’s got some moves my quarries will not expect. I’m really, really good. I tell myself to be humble, but it’s difficult. The only way to lose is to get caught, but that’ll never happen.

  This one’s going to take a while, require a few extra steps, a few more deaths, but I’m into playing the long game. Makes the winning so much sweeter.

  I’ve already made my opening gambit.

  And her name’s Belinda . . .

  * * *

  The ferry plowed across surprisingly rough gray waves, its running lights quivering against the black waters of Puget Sound. Belinda Meadowlark sat with a book at a table inside the upper deck, but though she read the same passage three times, it was Rob’s handsome face she kept seeing superimposed on the page. Unable to concentrate, she finally closed the hardback with a decided thump. It was a story about love and revenge, and she couldn’t see how the ending was going to be anything but disappointing. She lived for happy endings. Always. Maybe because she’d had so few of them.

  But that had all changed when she met Rob. He was gorgeous and funny—did she say gorgeous? OMG! He was a god! He’d struck up a conversation with her at the bar in Friday Harbor the previous April. OMG! When she recalled the way he sought her out, it still caused a hot thrill to run right from her hoohaw straight up to her breasts. My, my. She could feel it even now, just at the thought, and her cheeks reddened and she looked around, almost certain someone would notice. She damn near had to fan herself.

  But there were only a few people on the ferry tonight and the ones that were had stayed on the lower deck.

  Rob . . . She smiled as she recalled the way his lustrous brown eyes had looked her over. “Do I know you?” he’d asked curiously, tilting his head in that way that made her want to grab him and squirm all over him.

  Of course he didn’t know her. She was no beauty and she could stand to lose a few pounds, where he was casually handsome and looked totally fit. He’d been wearing short sleeves, even though it had been brisk with a capital BRRR the day he’d been standing outside the hotel, watching the passengers disembark from the last ferry. Belinda, who lived in Friday Harbor, had immediately tagged him as a tourist.

  “I don’t think so,” she told him regretfully.

  He slowly shook his head, wagging it from side to side. “No, we’ve met . . .”

  “I would have remembered,” she admitted, so suddenly wishing it were true. He looked good enough to eat and he smelled a little like Old Spice and something darker and muskier.

  He snapped his fingers. “Belinda,” he said. “And your last name’s . . . some bird?”

  She goggled and gasped aloud in shock and delight. “Meadowlark!”

  He grinned. “I remember now. You were pointed out to me at some event around here a year or so ago.”

  She racked her brain, trying to think where she’d been that he would have seen her. “A year
or so ago?”

  “Right about then, I think.”

  “I don’t know what that would be,” she murmured dubiously. “Maybe the clambake?” The owners of one of the restaurants near the harbor came from the East Coast and put on an annual clambake, adding salmon to the menu to make it more Pacific Northwest, but it was really kind of a small affair, and she’d only been there a minute or two before she had to leave.

  “That sounds right,” he said after a moment of thought. “Well, what are you doing now? Can you have a drink? I’m buying.”

  “I—need to go home . . . first.”

  “Come back. I’ll be in the bar here.” He jerked his head in the direction of a small place called the Sand Bar. “I don’t know anybody else around here. My buddies all took off sailing, but I’m not heading home till tomorrow.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “California. I’m based out of Los Angeles. I sell sports equipment up and down the West Coast.”

  Belinda had immediately thought about the pounds she needed to lose and she’d been deeply embarrassed.

  “Go on home,” Rob encouraged, “but come back. What do you like to drink? I’ll have one waiting for you.”

  She didn’t drink, as a rule, but she didn’t want to seem unsophisticated, so she said tentatively, “A cosmopolitan?”

  “Perfect.” He smiled at her again, a flash of white, then had headed toward the bar. She’d almost followed right after him, but she’d forced herself to go home first, then had looked in the mirror in despair. How could he be interested in her? It didn’t make sense. But then, he was just trying to pass the time and he’d seen her and knew her. It couldn’t be from the clambake, though. She wanted it to be, but she’d barely arrived at the beach when her mother had called and demanded she help with Grandpa, who was raising hell at the nursing home again.

  Who cares? she’d told herself at the time as she squeezed into her best jeans and the purple blouse, real silk, that made her breasts look good and had a sexy shimmer in dim light, which the Sand Bar had in spades. Sometimes it was so dark there you felt like you had to raise your hand to within an inch of your face to see it.

  She’d hurried to meet him, slipping a little on the wet concrete walk that led to the Sand Bar’s front door, her new boots kind of pinchy and uncomfortable, but they looked good.

  Inside, she’d followed the dull path of carpet to the darkened main bar where, luckily, a pink neon beer sign in the shape of a crab helped her make out some forms.

  “Belinda!” Rob called, standing up at a table in the back of the room.

  She threaded her way carefully toward him, decrying her bumpity-bump hips as they brushed the tables. When she neared him, he reached out and grabbed her arm, guiding her the last few steps to a black Naugahyde bench. He sat right down beside her, their thighs touching, and he turned on his phone and used it like a flashlight to show her her drink.

  “It’s really dark in here,” she said apologetically.

  “I kind of like it.” And his hand had slipped along her forearm, sending her nerve endings into high gear.

  She honestly couldn’t remember all that much about the rest of the evening, except that he drove her home and kissed her lightly on the lips at the front door of her crappy apartment. She’d told him she was a teacher’s aide, and had said she was working on her degree; she remembered that much. And she did recall throwing herself into his arms and planting a sloppy kiss back at him.

  Embarrassing!

  But he’d laughed, squeezed her, and said that he would keep in touch.

  She’d thought that would be the end of it, but he was as good as his word, texting her from every city he visited. Two weeks after that first encounter he was back, and that time she’d let him into her bedroom. Actually, she’d practically dragged him in, and he’d made love to her so sweetly she’d fought back tears. Luckily, she hadn’t broken down and cried. How juvenile would that have been? At the door he’d kissed her hard enough to make her toes curl.

  “When will you be back?” she’d asked, dying inside at the thought of not seeing him for a while. She would die without him. Just die.

  “Next Saturday night. Take the last ferry out of Friday Harbor to Orcas Island,” he told her.

  “The last ferry? I could come earlier,” she said eagerly.

  “No. The last ferry. Go to the upper deck. I’ll have something special for you.”

  So, here she was, cruising along. The sun had sunk into the sea and there was a quiet somnolence to the humming engines and near empty boat. She couldn’t concentrate on her book. She half-expected something amazing to happen, like he might suddenly appear or something, but so far there’d been no surprises.

  Bzzz. She jumped when she heard the text.

  I see you, little bird.

  She looked around wildly, eagerly. He was here? Where?

  And then she spied him on the outside deck, peering through the window at her. He lifted a hand in greeting, his grin a slash of white. Abandoning her book, she ran to the door, sliding it open, and was greeted by a slap of cold sea air and a buffeting wind. When she rounded the corner he’d disappeared from where he’d looked at her through the window. “Where are you?” she called, but the wind threw her words back into her throat.

  “Right here.”

  He was behind her, grabbing her around the waist.

  She laughed in delight and tried to turn to face him, but he wouldn’t have it. She realized he was humping her from behind.

  “I want you, little bird. Right here. Right now.”

  “Are you crazy?” She giggled. “Anybody could come up on us!”

  “But they won’t. Come on.”

  And then she was, sprawled facedown on the wet deck and he was yanking down her jeans and pulling up her hips, jamming himself inside her, pumping hard and fast. It hurt like hell and she couldn’t help the little yelp of pain, though she tried to stifle it. She acquiesced, her eyes sliding around in fear, hoping against hope no one would discover them.

  She was relieved when it was over. “Good, huh?” he breathed in her ear, one hand gripping her breast almost painfully.

  “Good,” she murmured, reaching for the jeans that were pooled around her ankles. She was in an ungainly position, on her hands and knees, when he suddenly swooped her to her feet, finally turning her to look at him.

  “My pants,” she whispered, trying to grab them with her right hand.

  “You don’t need them where you’re going.”

  “What?”

  “Birds need to fly.”

  And then he picked her up with furious strength and tossed her over the rail. She was so stunned she didn’t cry out until the water closed over her head. She gulped in a deluge, flailing, dragged down by the jeans tangled around her ankles, unable to kick with any strength. By the time she could make a sound, the ferry had churned away into the blackness, and the wind shrieked louder than her voice. She screamed and screamed, but she was no match for the gales that tore across the surface of the water.

  The last sight she had on this earth were the ferry lights, growing smaller and smaller, finally winking out.

  Then she sank beneath the cold, black water one final time.

  Chapter One

  Andi gazed down at the toes of her black flats, her most comfortable work shoes. The right heel was scuffed from long hours resting on the carpet of her Hyundai Tucson as she’d pressed down on the accelerator. She supposed she really ought to put some polish on it. It wasn’t going to get better by itself.

  She sat in a chair with polished oak arms and a blue cushion, her vision focused on the commercial gray carpet that ran the length of the reception area. Minutes elapsed, their passing accompanied by a flat hum in her ears. She’d been in this same suspended state for over three months, ever since Greg’s death. Friends and family had consoled her over losing her husband, murmuring words of encouragement and hope, and she’d tried to acknowledge their kindness.

>   But what if you don’t feel anything? What if your husband’s infidelity creates a different truth? What if your grief is from the shock of change and not the actual loss of your spouse?

  The only person she’d told her true feelings to was Dr. Knapp, her therapist, the woman to whom Greg had steered her when she’d been so depressed, and that was before his death.

  But you loved Greg once, didn’t you?

  She reopened her eyes. After four years of marriage, three failed IVF procedures, one ugly affair—his, not hers—where Greg’s lover had turned up pregnant—oh, yes, that had happened—her love for him was a whole lot harder to remember.

  She looked around the waiting room. A twentysomething woman with dark hair and the drawn, faraway look of the utterly hopeless sat across the room. Andi wondered if some terrible fate had befallen her. She suspected she’d had that same look on her face when she’d learned the last IVF implantation hadn’t taken. And she may have looked that way when she’d learned Greg’s Lexus had veered off the road that encircled Schultz Lake and plunged into the water. One moment she was lost in her failure to start a family, the next she was a widow.

  Greg’s two siblings, Carter and Emma, were grieving and sympathetic to Andi’s loss until they learned she’d inherited 66 percent of Wren Development, the family business started by Douglas Wren, Carter and Emma’s grandfather, whereas they’d only gotten 17.5 percent apiece. Andi had become the major stockholder upon Greg’s death. Now they couldn’t stand dealing with her, especially since she’d become part of the company. Couldn’t stand that she was “in the way.” Her business degree didn’t matter. They just wanted her gone.

  The inner door opened and a nurse in blue scrubs said, “Mrs. Wren? Dr. Ferante will see you now.”

  Slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder, Andi followed after her through the door she held open. They walked down polished floors that squeaked beneath the crepe soles of the nurse’s shoes. She hadn’t wanted to make this appointment, but the gray fog that wouldn’t lift from around her wasn’t normal. And the weight on her chest was killing her. Her therapist had prescribed pills for her, but they hadn’t seemed to help and she’d stopped taking them.